


Your Constellations Across My Skin

by orphan_account



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, introspective makoto, post-confession, this gentle heart will mess you up - side b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 07:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Makoto insists that it should hurt. Shouldn't it hurt?</p>
<p>Companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/988441">This Gentle Heart Will Mess You Up</a> by Ad_Astra (permission granted).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Constellations Across My Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [This Gentle Heart Will Mess You Up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/988441) by [Ad_Astra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ad_Astra/pseuds/Ad_Astra). 



> dialogue from next-to-end scene is taken directly from "this gentle heart". it's a little bit necessary to read that first - please do, it's a wonderful story that i am about to mangle with my angst infested fingers.
> 
> (this started out funny in my head and then it totally wasn't.)

 

 

Makoto spends three days waiting for the pain to kick in.

\--------------

He doesn’t go over to Haru-chan’s house that day, even though it’s Friday; instead he drops his backpack in the middle of the living room, heads up stairs, shuts the door, and sprawls himself across his bed for a solid twenty minutes. His entire body tingles - a surprisingly good kind of tingling, actually - his insides buzz in an electric way, enough to send him flipping over, back and forth, back-stomach-back-stomach until he hears his phone buzzing in a long, epic drone.

It’s a message from Haru-chan. _You okay?_

Makoto expects the surge to hit him at that precise moment, expects to feel that overwhelming, horrible sweetness that he gets whenever Haru does _anything_ , expects his heart to pound so hard against his chest that he will feel it in his _forehead_. Instead, nothing happens - possibly because his heart is doing the pounding thing already. His body continues to tingle, and he tries really hard to convince himself that his fingers are shaking because it’s Haru-chan, Haru-chan texted me first! Maybe all hope isn’t lost even though that, he knows deep down, isn’t even remotely true.

I’m fine, he starts to type back, and then his fingers freeze.

Is he fine, though?

He feels fine.

A little numb, maybe. But fine.

Makoto has a gentle heart, the kind that cushions its own falls, and perhaps that’s why it merely continued beating after Haru said “I’m sorry,” like it was anyone’s _fault_ that Makoto fell in love with him.

He lets his phone drop onto the mattress and presses his face into a pillow. Last night he spent a good fourteen minutes in almost this exact position, planting clumsy kisses all over his striped pillowcase and wondering what it would be like with a real person, preferably a beautiful boy with silky black hair and lazy blue eyes that closed when their lips met. He did not expect this real person to be Matsuoka Rin.

Absentmindedly, Makoto parts his lips. Rin left this faint, sweet aftertaste in his mouth, which doesn’t make any sense at all, because he doesn’t eat sweets and smelled like chlorine and sunblock. If anything, he should have tasted bitter and unsatisfying.

His pillowcase tastes tired. Makoto thinks he might be tired, too.

\--------------

When he wakes up the sun’s just setting, and he sees the lazy summer evening haze dropping over the trees. They were talking about sun symbolism in literature today, he vaguely remembers, and is impressed with himself for remembering anything from class at all. He’d spent most of the day trying to figure out how to word his feelings into a way easily understood by Haru-chan. In hindsight, paying attention in class would have been the wiser course of action.

“I didn’t expect you to be here, Makoto,” his mother informs him as he sits up, blinking blearily into the silver-rose light of his room. “Is something wrong?”

There’s that expectant feeling again. His mother’s gentle fingers brush back his hair, her eyes soft, the barest hint of worry peeking out behind her smile. He thinks that might be it. The presence of love so stable, and tender, the kind of love he wishes he could see in Haru-chan’s eyes. The soft touch. When he was younger, this touch alone could tip him over the edge when he was in the Right Mood, could fill his eyes with tears.

He’s still a little numb. Probably, Makoto decides, still in shock. He realizes that he’s being awfully calm and composed about this whole thing, and wonders if something is wrong with him.

“No, nothing really,” he tells his mother.

“You have twelve unread text messages from Haruka-kun,” his mother counters, worry smoothing out the curve of her smile into a line instead.

“I was just - I wasn’t - well, I was tired so - I came back home, and - oh no, I completely forgot to text him back!” Makoto reaches for his phone. His hand doesn’t make it before the phone is taken away. 

“Makoto,” says Okaa-san with authority, “Haruka-kun never texts you. And you usually nap at his place, don’t you? Did something happen between you two? Were you feeling sick today?”

In a matter of speaking, Makoto supposes.

“I think I love someone,” he admits. “But they don’t love me back.”

Okaa-san reverts from being authoritative-maternal-presence and back into Mama, whose palm is warm against his cheek, her smile understanding and maybe a little bit sad. That does send a twinge of pain reverberating through Makoto’s chest, but it isn’t the type of pain he’s expecting. Mama takes a seat on the bed next to him, switches on a lamp, and puts an arm around his shoulder. “That has been known to happen,” she says, her tone kind, “it happened to me twice before I met your father.”

“Twice?”

“Twice,” she agrees. “I cried both times. It felt like there was a crack in my heart that would never heal, but, you know, eventually, I met your father, and he fixed it. The hurt always goes away after a while, Makoto.”

How long does “a while” mean? A week? A day? A few hours? Half an hour of tilting his head and letting Rin kiss him, and kissing Rin back?

“It doesn’t hurt,” Makoto says, and looks at his mother seriously. “Why doesn’t it hurt?”

Mama considers this for a moment. “Maybe it does hurt,” she lets out, slowly. “Sometimes, this kind of pain is something you’re born with. Sometimes you feel it for so long that it doesn’t feel like anything at all.”

Makoto tries to make sense of this. He doesn’t know when he fell in love with Haru-chan. It could have been three days ago. It could have been three years ago. It could have been _ten_ years ago. It could have always been there, ever since they were four years old, and Haru-chan told him calmly that he should “stop holding the pool wall, Mako, I want to swim with you already.”

“Sometimes,” Mama says, after a bit of a pause, which is how he knows she is about to impart upon him her Last Profound Line, “sometimes, it isn’t supposed to hurt at all.”

“Okay,” he says, a little incredulous. His mother lets him have his phone back.

\--------------

**Haru-chan** : Makoto?

**Haru-chan** : Makoto, are you coming over?

**Haru-chan** : Nagisa and Rei are here.

**Haru-chan** : I’m sorry, Makoto.

**Haru-chan** : Rei thought it would be good if I apologized.

**Haru-chan** : You’re still my best friend. I mean it.

**Haru-chan** : Makoto, don’t do anything stupid.

**Haru-chan** : Nagisa and Rei are playing Diablo.

**Haru-chan** : They won’t stop.

**Haru-chan** : I mean, they just got us both killed.

**Haru-chan** : Four times.

**Haru-chan** : Help.

\--------------

Then, during dinner, Makoto thinks it might hit him while he’s doing something completely mundane, like picking off the rice at the bottom of his bowl.

It doesn’t.

They have pineapple shortcake for dessert.

_Haru-chan doesn’t love me_ , he thinks with each bite. _This cake is delicious_.

\--------------

He does a lot of things that remind him of Haru-chan, on purpose, trying to goad himself into it. According to furtive Internet searches, there is always a moping period, and the sooner he gets it over with, the sooner he can face Haru-chan again without hanging his heart up on a clothespin dangling precariously on a tightrope strung across the aching dryness of his throat.

On Saturday, he takes Ren and Ran to the pool.

Ren takes an interest in freestyle. Makoto feels his stomach churning and convinces himself for approximately three minutes that _this is it_ , but it turns out that he’s just being nervous about Ren crashing his head into the wall - his little brother has a tendency to not look where he’s swimming, and unlike Haru-chan, he hasn’t developed that scary, intuitive wall-sensor that Haru-chan possesses. Ran looks cute in a two-piece that Haru-chan picked out for her last birthday, a frilly and adorable light blue set that has the other boys gawking at her. Ren surfaces occasionally to glare at them.

Makoto wishes he was nine years old again, delighting in simple things like fairy tales. He sighs, leans back in his chair, takes out his phone, and snaps a few pictures of his younger siblings.

\- And he sends them to Rin.

In fact, he texts Rin, too. _We’re at the pool! I think Ran wants to learn butterfly_.

He doesn’t stop texting Rin all afternoon. Rin doesn’t reply, which isn’t all that surprising, and Makoto takes a few selfies before Ran leaps out of the pool with a startling sense of balance for a nine year old and places her wet hands on his knees.

“Don’t be so _boring_ , Mako-nii. You’re acting like one of those teenage girls with a new boyfriend.”

Before they make it back home, three more photos find themselves whizzing through cyberspace towards Samezuka Academy’s network. There’s one of Ren mid-canonball, one of Ren trying to teach Ran a peculiar kind of front crawl, and one of a group of tall guys with rainbow-colored hair. _Is this a new trend, Rin?_

\--------------

On Sunday morning, Makoto wakes up early and runs himself a bath.

He has one of those floating toys, a little orca whale, that matches Haru’s dolphin. It hasn’t seen light for weeks, since Makoto tends to sleep until the last minute, reducing leisurely baths into rushed showers, with soap suds still clinging to the curtain when he hastily towels himself off.

He fills the tub and then dips his foot in. The water is hot. Good. As he settles himself, tilting his head back, the water level rises a little. The orca takes a place floating contentedly next to where his knee juts out above the surface, and Makoto closes his eyes and tries to empty his mind of everything but Haru.

His heart gives a funny twinge.

Makoto thinks about things like the way Haru-chan tosses his hair after getting out of the pool, the way his eyes are closed when he does it but open when he’s finished. He thinks about the slippery grasp of Haru-chan’s slender fingers around his hand, and how they let go of each other so gently that he doesn’t even realize until Haru’s walking away. He thinks about the crease in Haru’s eyebrows when he frowns, the way he doesn’t bilnk when he’s concentrating, the smooth ripple of his voice when he says “mackerel”.

His face heats up. He takes a deep breath and sinks his head below the surface, opens his eyes wide and stares through the water at the whorls on the ceiling of his bathroom. Through the faint disturbances of the water, it looks like he’s staring at a static-filled version of Starry Night.

He holds his breath for a long time, and then opens his mouth to let bubbles trail upwards. They’re beautiful, free, floating.

He thinks about That Night, coughing into waking on the wet sand, the way Haru’s hand shook around his shoulder, the sudden bursts of worry that forced words from his throat.

It takes twenty minutes, forty minutes, forty-five, before Ren and Ran wake up, crash through the door, and tell him to take his personalized onsen treatment somewhere else so that they can get ready for a trip to the supermarket. Makoto puts the orca toy away and tries hard not to think about how he feels peaceful, too peaceful, relaxed, his entire body loose-limbed and soft and warm and wonderful. There’s a certain kind of desperation in him, _shouldn’t he be sad_ , and he thinks that it’s probably the fact that the water has, for once, given him the same therapeutic effect that it gives Haru-chan.

He finds himself reaching for his phone after putting on clothes for the day, feeling thoroughly dejected about having been robbed of his Grand Mope.

_Hey, Rin_.

There is, predictably, no response. With some trepidation, he presses the call button.

_You’ve reached_

_[Matsuoka Rin]_

_He’s not available. Please leave a message after the tone._

It’s weird hearing Rin say his own name. Makoto’s grown used to hearing him say Haru’s name, a lot. He almost grew used to hearing Rin say _his_ name, as they fused their mouths together against the bookshelf. Rin’s hair is as soft as it looks, slipping through his fingers the same way as the TV commercials show, and his lips are soft, too, and his teeth really aren’t that sharp, or at least, there were no cut tongues, and the column of his throat so tender, soft as sakura petals.

His voice, quiet, rasping out three syllables. _Makoto_.

Ah.

It’s because Rin was the last person he saw, Makoto decides. If he had gone to Haru-chan’s house afterwards --

His thumb accidentally presses _call_ again.

And again.

(And again.)

\--------------

_[Matsuoka Rin]_

_[Matsuoka Rin]_

_[Matsuoka Rin]_

\--------------

Rin is going to be furious, isn’t he?

\--------------

He drops an egg on the kitchen floor.

“Onii-chan,” Ran scolds, hands on her hips, looking extraordinarily like their mother.

“I’m sorry, Ran,” Makoto says, and leans down to wipe up the mess. Fortunately he catches all the squicky egg yolk before it can harden into Scrape-Resistant Tragedy against the floor.

“Onii-chan you _suck_ at this,” Ren says, whipping the cake batter furiously. He’s getting bits of it all over the counter. “No wonder you eat so much mackerel when you go over to Haru-nii’s, it’s because you can’t cook _anything_.”

This, Makoto realizes, is true.

He still doesn’t hurt. Ren and Ran continue to talk about how Haru-nii is so much more competent in the kitchen and all Makoto can think of is _would Rin like these cupcakes_?

Distractions, he tells himself.

He accidentally tips too much vanilla extract into the frosting. Ren and Ran giggle, and the oven timer goes off, and Makoto has to watch his siblings to make sure they don’t touch anything metallic. The frosting smears across each cupcake smooth and rich, sweet. Makoto sprinkles coconut flakes on top, watches as they settle like snow.

\--------------

On Monday morning Makoto spends three minutes fidgeting outside the door of Haru’s bathroom before he hears Haru call out, almost weary. “Just come in.”

He’s never opened that door so slowly in his life.

Haru is sitting on the edge of the bathtub, fully dry, fully dressed in his school uniform. Even like that, even out of the water with his shirt just a little bit too loose on his shoulders, he looks beautiful. Beautiful and far away, unreachable, his eyes slightly unfocused. Haru-chan looks tired, like he hasn’t slept all weekend. When Makoto coughs slightly, he looks up with an almost-smile.

“Sorry,” the smile says.

And just like that, the surge comes. Makoto doesn’t want to ever see Haru like this, _ever_. Haru has no reason to look at him apologetically; he never did, and he never should.

“Where were you all weekend?” Haru-chan asks quietly.

“I was… busy,” he replies. Haru-chan nods, just once, almost imperceptible. But Makoto can tell. He’d always been able to tell, and his heart aches and aches, because Haru is right there - it would be so easy for him to lean down, his thumb brushing over the pale curve of Haru’s cheek, and kiss him, as softly as he dreamed about.

“I had my phone with me,” Haru says, utterly lost.

Or, Makoto thinks, he can let Haru know that he is still Makoto’s best friend, too, and that comes first. It would be easy for him to touch his lips to Haru’s and smile and promise Haru that they can spend all the time in the world at the pool, even in the ocean, and lean back and see the flicker of something in Haru’s eyes. There would be wonder and a hint of something, a promise, a deep hidden smile, _something_ , and there would also be a shadow, because shadows always come with light. And one day, Haru would look at him with the same lost expression on his face, and Makoto’s heart would break all over again, break slowly and sweetly and sadly, take him down all those clouds he’d cleared so carefully in the kind of slow-motion devastating fall that possesses the quiet and achingly beautiful sadness he only reads about in books.

Sad is something Makoto can handle. But he knows that Haru-chan couldn’t handle being the cause of that sadness, in the end. It only takes one look at Rin to remember that.

“Wouldn’t that change things, Haru-chan?” Makoto points out gently, feeling his smile crack itself open and raw at the corners.

_It’s okay_ , the smile says.

Haru-chan looks very young, and very conflicted as he stands up. He reaches out like he’s about to touch Makoto’s hand, and then stills at the last moment. Makoto can feel the ghost-touch across his thumb and decides that for now, it will be okay, that the wound neither of them wanted to make will heal over time. His mother was right. Maybe he had been hurting all this time, without realizing it.

“I’ll make you breakfast,” Haru says after a moment. “Nagisa left a bunch of buttermilk biscuits with me.”

“We’re going to be late, Haru-chan.”

It takes the barest hint of an extra beat before Haru replies, hoarsely, “Drop the -chan. Let’s skip today.”

“It’s Monday,” Makoto attempts a shocked voice.

“Let’s skip today,” Haru repeats.

“It’s Monday,” Makoto agrees.

\--------------

Haru-chan tries his hardest to fit them back together the way they once were. They play video games together all morning, quiet but friendly, and Makoto’s phone buzzes a few times, indicating texts from Nagisa, but neither of them move their focus from the television screen.

Makoto lasts until noon. He pauses the game and looks at Haru until Haru looks back at him.

He is a little relieved that the pain is still there, but also a little sad. “I think I need some time by myself, Haru-chan,” he admits. Or at least, some time without Haru, loathe as he was to even think along those lines.

Haru nods. “Take some food for lunch,” he offers, gesturing towards the kitchen where the rice is freshly steamed and a perpetual plate of mackerel awaits. Makoto decides to accept this. If Haru isn’t able to give him that kind of love, but he is more than willing to give him _this_ kind of love, then, it would be pretty rude to reject him, wouldn’t it? This is something that Makoto can help, after all.

Haru follows him out the door.

“Ah, you don’t have to walk me home or anything,” says Makoto.

Haru fixes him with a serious look. “If I’m worthy of being the one Makoto likes best,” he tells him calmly, “then I should go to school, shouldn’t I?”

\--------------

He almost texts Rin, then deletes the half a message he writes, then swipes out of the message application. There are some things that have to be done in person.

\--------------

It takes him a while to find Rin, a few wrong turns down hallways, and once, accidentally, walking into a chemistry lecture and having to explain that no, it isn’t his birthday, and it’s not anyone’s birthday in that class either, and he didn’t lose his uniform, he doesn’t even go here!

He catches Rin after class lets out, and waves. Rin looks like he’s about to walk away. Makoto takes a deep breath and calls out - “Rin!”

Rin looks at him like he’s grown frosting for hair, and leads him away, back down the hallway with that chemistry lecture, down a corridor, and asks him what the hell he’s carrying.

“Um…” Makoto isn’t entirely sure what Rin’s getting at. “It’s a cupcake.”

“I know it’s a cupcake, smartass.” The words make him smile a little. “I’m asking what the hell do you mean to do with this?”

Makoto thinks about this for a moment. He came here intending to tell Rin that he’s mostly okay with losing Haru and maybe tell Rin to try again, maybe there is something Haru-chan doesn’t tell him, maybe he’s wrong about Haru-chan more than he likes to admit. All he knows is that he will, eventually, let Haru-chan patch his heart back up properly, like a best friend should, and that no matter what he wishes for, Haru-chan will not patch it up like a boyfriend would.

Instead, his brain is reeling. Rin is callous, in a way that Haru isn’t. He loses track of his thoughts and says the first thing that comes to mind. “Uh. Peace offering?”

_Peace offering_? For what?

Rin echoes his thoughts. “For what?”

“For what happened?” Makoto tries. “You weren’t returning my calls so I thought you were mad at me…”

“I was busy,” says Rin. “And I really don’t know what to say to you.”

To be fair, Makoto doesn’t really know what to say to Rin, either. And now Rin has all those photos of Ren and Ran. It’s a little funny. “Oh… okay,” he hears himself saying, vaguely in agreement. “Well - I -uh, have something I know I want to say.”

There - they’re back on track, now. Makoto takes a deep breath as Rin tells him to get on with it.

“I don’t regret it,” he says, and as the words leave his mouth he realizes that they’re true, completely true - he might still be in love with Haru, he might still feel apprehensive about Nagisa’s quick-fix methods, but he never had any sad thoughts about kissing Rin. He doesn’t understand it himself, entirely, but it was nice - the feeling of Rin’s hands tight across his spine, soft lips on his own, the lingering sweet aftertaste.

Rin looks a little frustrated. “Well, it’s a moot point because it’s not gonna happen again.”

Ah. Well. It was worth a shot. He watches, a little downcast, as Rin takes a bite out of the cupcake, and brightens when Rin’s eyes widen. There’s one thing he hasn’t messed up, so far. “You like it?”

“Eh, it’s okay,” Rin says before taking another bite. The action cheers Makoto up an inordinate amount. “Bad for my diet, though.”

But he keeps eating.

“Well, I have more,” Makoto tells him with no small amount of delight, and takes out the other cupcakes, samples one of them. Wow - he really _didn’t_ mess them up. “Hey, these are good!”

“Did you make this yourself?”

Makoto feels proud of himself for a change. “The twins helped. This is supposed to be a dozen pieces, but they ate 3 each, so now there are only 6…” Oh, whoops. “Oh no, these are supposed to be for you! Sorry, I ate my own peace offering.”

Rin rolls his eyes. It’s kind of cute. “Why are you sorry, you baked the damn things.”

“Oh - right,” Makoto says, feels himself smiling as he finishes off his cupcake. Rin does the same. He eats neatly, Makoto realizes, without spilling a single crumb, like he really cherishes the cupcake no matter how much his eyes roll. That really is cute. “Hey, Rin,” he says, swallowing the last bite.

“What?”

“I really didn’t regret it,” he says, trying his best to convey sincerity. “I liked it more than I thought I would.”

“You have frosting on your lip,” Rin says instead of replying.

Makoto, who has dealt with Haru doing this his entire life, isn’t fazed. “Oh, sorry.”

Rin takes a handkerchief from his pocket, out of all things, and Makoto is struck by the urge to laugh, because Rin is definitely staring intently at his mouth. He leans back a little to look Rin in the eye. “Ah, wait - no need for that -” and he licks his lips clean, still amused by the fact that Rin has a _handkerchief_. Not even Rei has one. Right?

Eventually, he realizes that Rin hasn’t blinked.

Maybe he should have used the handkerchief. Maybe bad manners like that aren’t conducive to Rin being functional. Makoto says, hesitantly, “Rin…?”

All at once, Rin jerks to life. “I hate you,” he says, fierce, and slams Makoto’s head into the wall with a kiss. He tastes like cream cheese frosting with an extra hint of vanilla.

Ah - this is unexpected, Makoto thinks, but kisses back all the same.

\--------------

They haven’t exactly learned how to move together, yet. Rin’s kisses are aggressive, hungry, which Makoto is fine with - he tries, sometimes, to give back, but mostly he is content to feel the heat of Rin’s body against his own, and the way his fingers brush across the corner of his jaw almost gently.

Rin says something about Haru again and Makoto thinks, dazed, okay, anything.

There are some things he can let go of, if they want to be free.

“I’ll come by practice on Wednesday,” Rin mumbles against his lips.

“What?”

“I’ll come by practice on Wednesday,” Rin repeats, frowning.

“Um, I think you should give Haru a little more time to -” Makoto starts to say. Rin leans in and reaches around his neck and hauls him down to kiss him, harder.

“I’m not stopping by for Haru,” he growls, rough and low and breathless.

Makoto laughs. This isn’t a _fix_ for anything, he tells himself. Rin’s heart is hard at the shell, and Haru took a chisel to it, sculpted along the crevices too deeply, left cracks that cut and bled themselves into each hard press of his mouth against Makoto’s. One day, maybe, it will be Rin and Haru-chan like this, tasting cupcake on each other. That’s something that cannot be helped. But for now, Rin lets Makoto guide their hips together, lets Makoto hold onto him in the way he’s always wanted to hold someone, and lets things happen. This isn’t a fix for anything, Makoto repeats firmly in his head. It’s just a thing that happens.

“Okay, Rin.”

**Author's Note:**

> ps check out the [sequel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1026756/chapters/2044151) ayyyy.


End file.
